Modern Mechanix

Cloak and Dagger of the High Fashion World (Nov, 1959)

2012-05-25T05:54:04Z

Cloak and Dagger of the High Fashion World

Here’s how glamor spies resort to complicated tricks to break through the ‘gilded iron curtain’ of the Paris couturiers… and how the ‘Mata Haris of High Fashion’ steal those precious secrets…

BY HENRI LECLAIR

If you think that international spies only hanker for juicy military secrets and the topmost confidences of diplomats, you are, of course, wrong. Espionage is actually hottest in relatively safer fields, where the secret agent, when caught, doesn’t face the prospect of the gallows and firing squads.

Innumerable spies are at large in the world today, snooping out people’s secrets under false flags. They spy on car makers, trying to outsmart one another with new designs and ingenious new gadgets. They are crawling for the scents of exclusive perfumers. Spies, spies, spies everywhere, seeking the ironclad secrets of big business and industry, including what the French call haut couture, the chichiest, most expensive, and — they hope — most exclusive of the big Parisian houses of high fashion and fad.

Unknown to most of us, the big business of coats-and-suits has its own exciting cloak-and-dagger sideshow. The big business of dressmaking simply swarms with leeches and para- sites, secret agents and bold counterfeiters. They make many a dishonest buck with other people’s dainty frills and thrills. The cloak-and-dagger influx of the fashion spies is hottest in hush-hush Parisian high fashion houses.

You are there — at the first showing of that exciting summer collection — behind locked doors — by special invitation — screened and trailed and guarded — for these top secrets you’re about to see — shown for the first time exclusively to a select few of the chosen clients ….

My lady has teased and tickled her solvent spouse until he melted at last and dished out two grand for the elaborate frock straight from Rue de la Paix in the heart of the great Parisian Fashion Belt. She expects to wear it at the next big charity shindig in the Waldorf and drive all her society friends and foes into convulsions of envy.

But when she makes her smartly delayed triumphant entry into the glittering ballroom, so dazzingly gowned to be frowned at with ahs and ohs, it’s she who turns sea-weed green with jealousy and frustration and anger. Wearing the identical gown (and probably wearing it even better), down to its last tricky plise on the lush brocade skirt, is her rival — a woman at that who could never afford such a dazzling creation at first hand.

Something precious and rare madam was supposed to possess alone in the whole wide world, a dream dress designed for her by one of the world’s most fashionable (and expensive) couturiers — is not the only one in the whole wide world! How did her rival acquire that identical second of an incomparable first? Certainly not directly from the designer! Such a double-cross would be inconceivable in the inner sanctums of high fashion! No self-respecting designer would survive such high treason!

The green-eyed rival who outshines her on the floor in that brazen replica of the unquestioned original is a glorified receiver of stolen goods. The design of the original dress was stolen by a sly spy who sneaked the secret to another, unscrupulous dressmaker from whom the rival had bought the gown, on the world’s most stylish black market, at a cut-rate price.

“THE LADY’S FRIEND”

It’s Paris in April. It may be cold outside, but it’s mighty hot in those gilded rooms off Champs-Elysee where the models are locked in their dressing rooms, awaiting the assignment of the new dresses to parade them before excited females and buyers from overseas, similarly locked in. The models are known for their discretion, or else they would be blacklisted and starve. The guests are known personally to the management, and if they are not exactly sworn to secrecy, they are expected to keep these pending secrets under their hats or risk blackballing that would mean professional or social suicide for most of them.

The scene may be anywhere in Paree where high fashion rules supreme — at Dior’s or Balenciaga’s, at Jacques Path’s or Patou’s it’s the same everywhere. The air is tense with electricity for it’s a privilege to be privy to all these quaint secrets and it’s always possible that a secret agent is in the exquisite audience.

Because the stakes are so high (a good fashion spy may rake up a fortune in a single season) and because the security precautions are so elaborate, the spy must resort to complicated tricks to break through this gilded iron curtain. He’s a pirate pure and simple, but his piracy has chic and style, for these are the best-dressed pirates in the world, with no black patch on their inquisitive eyes.

The simplest tricks is also best known to the big houses, but it’s the most difficult to combat. An accredited society lady attends the show, with proper credentials. She arrives with the numbered, embossed invitation in her gloved hand, made out to her name and carrying the stamped envelope in which it arrived. She’s checked and double-checked at the door. She must then wait until the saleslady who knows her personally identifies her and checks her in. There is no doubt in anybody’s mind that she is perfectly on the level. But she isn’t. She came with a dear friend of hers, not known to the house but vouched for by the lady — her best friend, she says, who’ll advise her on what to buy.

The friend is a spy! She bribed the lady to front for her, to smuggle her into this Tibet of high fashion, and now she is in. She sits in the. audience and watches the big parade of the glistening gowns. She seems to be interested, but not too much. And she certainly does nothing that would betray her purpose in being here. Her work begins only when the show ends. She advises her friend to make her choice among three or four gowns. The two retire to a fitting room where the chosen gowns are represented by models in close proximity to the two women.

The friend watches the fitting and notes with her mind’s eye every detail of the dresses. Afterwards, she rushes to her studio and sketches the top secret dresses from memory. Or she may be a dressmaker herself, working at her trade surreptitiously for a small coterie of inside clients, turning out the identical dresses at sharply cut rates.

The other favorite trick is known as that of “The Hesitant Client,” the well-heeled pain in the neck who can never make up her mind. Ninety-nine out of a hundred of these vacillators are strictly on the level — those feminine Hamlets who can never decide whether this or that dress is to be or not to be. But the hundredth is a cheat, and this is how she operates the trick.

She will go to the show on excellent credentials and pass even the closest scrutiny. She is excited and exhuberant, full of flattery and apparently of dough. Three dresses in particular struck her fancy, but, dear me, she cannot make up her mind. She wants to show them to her husband and let him pick what he likes best. Being a good customer and so trustworthy all around, the house agrees to send the three dresses to her home on approval. Next day she calls the house. She buys the one her husband chose, would they please pick up the other two? It goes without saying that she had them copied in the meantime.

This trick isn’t practiced by professional fashion spies as much as by those smart society ladies who try to be even smarter. They can afford the price of only a single original creation but would like to have several. They buy the one from the creator and have the other two made up by a clandestine little dressmaker on the pattern of the ones sent her on approval.

Among the spies who infest the big fashion houses are representatives of competitive designers who do not come to steal but merely to see what the rival house has up its sleeves. Behind the hottest espionage battle in the field is the ruthless rivalry of the French and Italian houses. For decades, the French had a hegemony in the field, but considerable inroads were made in recent years by Italian newcomers to this lucrative fleshpot.

Starting from scratch only a decade ago, the Italian designers entered into an unholy alliance with Paris’ most nimble-fingered fashion pirates to steal for them basic ideas on which they could then start their own collections.

The Franco-Italian rivalry brought a boom to high fashion espionage. In a single case that could be broken only after long and painstaking investigation, a gang of sixteen pirates could be unmasked as working behind those locked doors in Paris for Italian clients. All of them were mundane and sophisticated people, the kind of suave spies you see in Hollywood thrillers, without the sinister background of their shadowy underworld. They move freely and easily in the parquets of the best drawing rooms behind a false front of soignee elegance. Nine members of the gang were exquisite women, dazzlingly dressed, apparently owners of fat bank accounts, well able to afford the prices of Dior or Balmain or Schiaparelli. Behind them stood seven cunning men, the actual operators of the organized racket. The women worked for them, and their bank accounts reflected merely the wealth and investment that goes into the financing of this piracy.

The gang was exceptionally successful. Before it was blown up and dragged into court, its members copied hundreds or thousands of originals from twenty of France’s top fashion houses. Such a monster attack on the secrets of Parisian haute couture is rare if only because it has in it the very seed of eventual betrayal, for no gang can operate in safety for long when it consists of so many members. Utmost discretion is a prime condition for the success of the fashion spy. But with so many in on the game, leaks may occur and usually do, and even a false step on the part of a single member will quickly lead to the exposal of the whole gang.

“THE LONE WOLF”

Knowing this full well, and experienced at the game, the fashion spies prefer to operate singly and individually, pulling off their transactions alone and catering to individual employers. How does a lone wolf among the high fashion spies actually operate?

On the basis of exclusive investigations inside the secret world of fashion espionage, TOP SECRET can describe for the first time some of the methods of these agents. The spy may operate directly on the spot, worming his way into the house under false flags; or he may operate by remote control, like a military spy watching a maneuver from a distance. Fashion spies are sup- posed to deliver the goods, produce a faithful sketch, not merely describe the dress they have seen. Consequently they have to copy the design while it’s being shown or immediately afterwards when it’s still fresh in their memory.

Innumerable sly tricks were used to accomplish both. A man entered a showing with perfect credentials. He was an elegant old gent, supposedly a retired general who’d lost his right arm in World War I. In actual fact he was a spy, one of the shrewdest of the lot. Far from having lost his good arm, it was right there under his jacket, working feverishly through the show, sketching models as they came.

Anyone making such sketches, no matter how stealthily and surreptitiously, during the show is likely to be spotted, discreetly accosted and asked to show the “notes” she or he has made. But few are the dexterous fashion spies who can get away with sketching during a show. The closest such an intrepid spy could get to the models was by establishing himself in an apartment across the street from the house where the show was held, setting up high-powered binoculars on a firm tripod, focusing it on the show and sketching the models as they appeared. He was unmasked, and now the big houses either heavily curtain the windows of the big rooms where the show takes place or make certain that no unauthorized person is settled in any of the apartments across the street.

Another fashion spy refused to await the shows to get his sketches on paper. He aligned himself with a pretty model who inched her way into the confidence of a prominent house. At first working but occasionally, she became a permanent fixture in due course. During fittings in a certain room, she would moodily wander close to a certain window which was left open during the summer months, thus exposing the dress she was fitting to her accomplice who was sitting in a room across the street with binoculars, making sketches of the dress thus displayed in what was truly a one-man show.

Few fashion spies now depend on the old method of sketching and use instead the favorite system of all spies: miniature photography with hidden cameras. The same little machines which the world’s most notorious (and successful) spies had used to copy military or diplomatic secrets are also employed in this game. The little camera may be concealed in innumerable places. A pretty young woman came to a big fashion show with a stylish hat which had an abundance of artificial flowers for its decoration — and the camera was right there in that deceptive floral arrangement. A handsome young fashion spy found out from insiders planted in the house that on a certain day, the new models would be photographed in the Place de la Concorde. Great precautions were taken to keep all unauthorized persons away from the spot, but nobody paid any attention to the young man, apparently looking at the Tuileries through a pair of binoculars. In actual fact, the spy-glass had another window at the side, with a tiny camera hidden inside. While he seemed to be looking straight forward, he was taking pictures of the models as they were being photographed to his left.

Cameras were found built into the handbags of impeccable ladies and one strapped to a man’s leg, operated by the ingenious device of a release which led up to the pocket of his pants. A camera was concealed in a wristwatch, and another peeped at the show through the buttonhole of a suave spy’s lapel. The collection of a single Parisian house today contains several dozen such miniature cameras, all confiscated from fallen spies who entered the shows with honest faces but under false pretenses.

The fashion spy may be operating singly, but the stolen secrets are handled by elaborate organizations whose activities threaten the big houses in their very foundations. Espionage is but the first step to success in fashion piracy — the stolen design must be developed either into sketches or more frequently into models like the one from which it is copied. These Parisian copycats operate throbbing houses of their own and frequently overflow as far as the Riviera. In one such house raided by the police, there were found all the intricate tricks that all the big spy rings will use. From the outside the house betrayed nothing of its purpose and true enough, the counterfeiting of the stolen designs was going on in parts of the house to which it seemed the front office didn’t even have any entrance. When the police examined a grandfather clock in the manager’s office, it was found that it concealed the actual entrance to the secret room where the pilfered patterns were stored and where nimble hands were busy making up the counterfeit dresses from the stolen originals.

Faced with such a brash attack on their secrets, the big Parisian fashion houses banded together and organized their own defense. By now, these defensive forces and means are more elaborate than those of the attack. The organization under which they operate is called Chambre Syndicate de la Haute Couture Francaise, a sort of chamber of commerce of high fashion. Headed by the director of the House of Patou, the Chambre has its own police force and counter-espionage agency, to prevent the stealing and counterfeiting, not only of the original designs, but also of the patterns and accessories.

The first line of defense is a tight-lipped secrecy — as far as possible, even the dates of the showings are kept secret from the public at large, so as not to alert the actual and potential fashion spies. All insiders are carefully screened because it was found that some of the biggest piracy cases were pulled by insiders — prominent society ladies among members of the audience, or mannequins and so-called premiere maids, supervisors of the workrooms, among the employees.

“COUNTER-ATTACK”

The identity of the industry’s own secret agents is kept a secret and frequently it will happen that a man suspected of being an aggressive fashion spy is in reality a counter-spy of the industry setting a trap for an hostile agent.

Long in advance of a showing, before the finished products are unveiled before the invited representatives of the public, the collections are shown to the industry’s counter-spies. These highly-trained men and women then register in their minds the sacrosanct designs and accessories, to enable them to trace them to department stores, show-windows, and even private closets where their counterfeits may eventually turn up. From there, they work their way back and usually land the culprit behind the pilferage.

In general, the haute couture of France has loyal friends and employees and it is a special fifth column that conducts this campaign on its secrecies. The vast majority of the fashion spies are not even French — they come from Eastern Europe and South America and work for foreign clients. It’s impossible to assess in exact terms the damage this ruthless espionage is causing to this exquisite trade in beauty and elegance, but it easily runs into the millions.

ATOMIC ART (Nov, 1954)

2012-05-25T18:05:18Z

Dr Wheeler passed away in 1999. Obituary may be found here (PDF)

ATOMIC ART

By Gene Bylinsky

WHILE trying to “tag” microscopic fungi with the use of radioactive isotopes in 1951 for the Atomic Energy Commission, Dr. Harry Wheeler, Associate Professor of Botany at Louisiana State University, discovered that when the tiny fungi were given radioactive food and placed upon photographic paper they would take pictures of themselves. Working with his wife Naomi and Mrs. Caroline Durieux, under whom his wife was studying print-making methods, they tried using isotopes for prints—with great success.

Radioactive isotopes are mixed with printing ink. A drawing is made and exposed face-to-face to paper coated with a radio-sensitized substance. The paper is then developed and produces an exact image of the original drawing.

“The image is transferred from the radioactive drawing to the sensitized paper by invisible beta rays,” says Dr. Wheeler. “Since beta rays are electrons, we named the process Electron Printing.”

JEWELRY SUPERMARKET (May, 1956)

2012-05-25T05:52:49Z

JEWELRY SUPERMARKET
Jewelry sales soared when Juno Products Co. of Cleveland began sell-service mart

Wholesale buyers put selected baubles in baskets, pay for them at check-out counter.

Easy Money – The Hard Way (May, 1950)

2012-05-25T05:53:11Z

Easy Money – The Hard Way

FED up with your job? There’s plenty of free folding money for the guy who’s willing just to sit tight a few seconds. Look at Captain Leo Simon, the man tightening the Martian earmuffs (Picture 1) to protect his job-damaged hearing. Twice a day and three times on Sundays he seats himself inside a wooden box (2) and waits a moment. For this the gaping crowds at beaches and carnivals are making him rich. . . . Because during that brief pause he blows himself up—with three sticks of dynamite (3)! Picture 4 shows Simon sprawling in the wreckage after his bang-up performance. Sitting right in the eye of the explosion—a “safe” vacuum six inches from the blast’s source—saves him from shattering to bits like the box. He gets up quickly and calmly walks away (5). They call him “Suicide” Simon. Anybody wonder why? •

“I’M never nervous,” says Holger Rasini. Every evening just before he dashes off to work in his 350-lb custom-built car, he gets tense, however. Not because he’s worrying about anything as trivial as a job, or money. He’s worrying about losing his life! That’s what this Danish daredevil risks each night at European shows when he rockets off the runway to do a four-wheeled loop-the-loop in midair. In Picture 1 the car is nosing down for the flipover on its back (2). Falling fast, he whips out of the loop just in time to crack down on the raised tarpaulin in a happy landing. It’s hard on the spectators but harder on Rasini’s neck. He’s never nervous now—he’s already scared all the nerves out of his body. •

IT’S tough on the teeth but Andre Le Gall has enough pull, to get along very well in life—even when pitted against four motorcycles with the combined strength of 22 horses. This strong jaw man also astounds the citizens of St. Servan, France, by jaw-towing four freight cars through the streets. Despite all that pull, though, he has still another jawing job-crying out the town news. •

Free Proof That WAISTLINE FAT Can Be Quickly Reduced —without drugs, diets or exercises (May, 1929)

2012-05-25T14:41:21Z

Free Proof That WAISTLINE FAT Can Be Quickly Reduced —without drugs, diets or exercises

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Take your waist measurement before and after this Free 10-Day Trial. Note the difference in inches. Feel the improvement in your general condition. According to the terms of our absolute guarantee, you must be thoroughly satisfied with the results secured—or you pay nothing.

Coupon Brings Free Details.

Write us at once and you will receive our Special 10-Day Trial Offer—a detailed description of this most successful re- ducing method, the principles of which are highly endorsed by leading physicians and professional athletes everywhere. For the sake of your health and appearance take advantage of this offer at once. Send no money. Write now. The Weil Company, 1575 Hill Street, New Haven, Conn.

Bronx Bronco-Buster (Nov, 1954)

2012-05-26T02:47:32Z

Hopalong Abramowitz: best cowboy name ever.

Bronx Bronco-Buster

Hopalong Abramowitz has been doing business at the same old stable for the past 50 years. Now he’s the last of the horse-breeders left in the Bronx.

A half-century ago, when New York City’s now-teeming Bronx was one big cow pasture, a young horse-fancier named Harry Abramowitz arrived from Minsk, Russia, with yearnings to raise bangtails in his adopted land. Today, Harry—now known as Hopalong Abramowitz—is still breeding horses right in the heart of a Bronx that has become one of the world’s most heavily-populated boroughs.

Hoppy, who is usually gaily decked out in a checkered shirt and rolled-up blue dungarees, complete with ten- gallon hat, six-shooter and briefcase, works 20 hours a day taking care of his stock. He rents out his horses and wagons to peddlers but his greatest income is derived from the hundreds of period horse-drawn wagons which are used for promotional parades and on TV. Hoppy began collecting them back in 1910.

One of the stagecoaches Hoppy keeps in his newly-painted stable rates pretty high with the Bronx Bronco Buster. As he puts it, “I wouldn’t take $5,000 for that stage today. It’s one of 64 pieces I bought from an estate that once stood where the Waldorf-Astoria is today. Yep, I got carriages, covered wagons, coaches and even a small trolley. Got them stored in five warehouses. Don’t mind the looks of the stagecoach, lately it was on the Motorola TV hour and they sprayed it with paint to make it look as if it had been through the desert. They even lathered my horses to make them look as if they’d been running hard.”

A visit to Hoppy’s breeding stable is an eye-opener. He usually travels there by stagecoach with his helper, Buster McGill, who is an expert rider aside from his job of driving Hoppy’s billboard wagons around town.

It’s usually quite a procession that files through the Bronx streets to Hopalong Abramowitz’s stable at 144th Street under the old Third Avenue El. The neighborhood kids trail him on foot and bike to see what is going on and since Hoppy is a well-known figure, nearly everyone has a friendly greeting for him as he clatters merrily along aboard his stage.

The stable for breeding horses is in an ancient brick building with old wooden doors that are very much in need of repairs and is filled with all sizes and shapes . of Hoppy’s four-footed animals. Upon entering, a visitor may be scared to death that he’ll be caught in a stampede for the herd will sometimes begin to roll and kick and bite each other and the prancing goats seem to have the run of the place.

When you finally think you are in for a bad time Hoppy will calmly say, “They won’t harm you, laddie.”

Hoppy will tell you that his hobby and work is breeding horses, ponies, donkeys and goats, and breaking in wild horses for work. He says, “I get up at 3:30 in the morning and work to 11:30 at night, seven days a week. I really need six men but I have only one. Reliable stable men are hard to find. But I don’t care, this is my whole life and pleasure.”

The yard next to his stable is filled with old wagons and it is here that Hoppy’s charges are sometimes let out for air and sunshine.

He is fond of showing off Dolly, a young colt. When Hoppy says to her, “Show how you fold your legs,” the colt will promptly cross her front legs and bow her head.

“That’s a nice girl,” Hoppy will say as he rewards her with a hug.

He loves all of his horses, especially Baby, one of his new colts which he himself fed from a bottle a few weeks after she was bom. When he tried to demonstrate how he did it with a baby’s bottle filled with milk, Baby knocked him down. She had apparently outgrown her infant habit.

“Yes, I’ve been in the horse business over 60 years, ever since I was a kid in Minsk,” Hoppy said. “When I came to the Bronx it was all farms.

“You should have been around the day I drove six horses pulling a stagecoach with four donkeys loaded down with bags. Forty-second Street was closed from Grand Central to Fifth Avenue and Fifth Avenue was closed from 42nd to 60th Street. Forgot to tell you I was hauling some actor fellow with the world’s champion frog.” •

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IT’S A CRIME to waste so much as a scrap of paper (Aug, 1945)

2012-05-24T15:48:43Z

This, of course, took up a small corner of a page in the middle of a dozen page advertising section.

IT’S A CRIME to waste so much as a scrap of paper. Ten pounds of paper will make ten shell containers; ten pounds will make twenty blood plasma (have you given blood yet?) containers. Ten pounds of waste paper will furnish material for containers to hold 540 fifty-caliber tracer bullets. It’s important; turn in your waste paper today!

NEW in SCIENCE (May, 1950)

2012-05-24T15:48:21Z

NEW in SCIENCE

Static Garter protects you from static electricity explosions in textile mills, and chemical and munition plants. The device consists of a garter connected by chain to a contact pin clipped to the sole. Thus static charges are grounded to a conductive floor. Walter G. Legge, N. Y.

Window Salesman makes customers out of window shoppers. It’s a tape recording device which takes orders from outside by means of a mike inserted in the window. Practical jokers will find it expensive because it will cost them a quarter a shot. Gimbels, Philadelphia.

Magic Maharajah performs his fire-from-water trick in an effort to qualify as a full member of the Inner Magic Circle, a London organization of magicians. He’s the Maharajah of Jodhpur and it looks like he’ll be able to compete with the cleverest of fakirs in his native India.

Lip Service: no, it’s not a book of matches but a folder of 15 cardboard sticks tipped with lipstick. They’re disposable and good for a single application. A metal reflector is attached so that the ladies can do a good paint job. Made by Jan Morris, 271 Madison Ave., New York City.

U.S.A. DRINKING TEAM WARMUP SWEATER FOR GALS AND GUYS (Nov, 1959)

2012-05-24T15:48:03Z

U.S.A. DRINKING TEAM WARMUP SWEATER FOR GALS AND GUYS

The greatest for Drinking Dates. Beer Bouts, and as a Warmup Garment for other sporting events. Made of quality cotton fleece-lined fabric, in white with red lettering.

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NEWS OF WAR AND DEFENSE (Dec, 1941)

2012-05-24T15:47:25Z

NEWS OF WAR AND DEFENSE

“Sea Otter,” Radically New Cargo Boat, Tested.

ONE of the “hush-hush” items of America’s defense effort is a radically new type of boat known as the “Sea Otter.” A one-third size model of the new boat is shown at the top. At right is a full-scale “Sea Otter,” showing its novel pointed prow. The propeller is just aft of the center of the ship. Powered with 16 six-cylinder automobile motors, “Sea Otters” can be turned out in two months, will be 270 feet long, carry 1,500 tons of cargo, and have a cruising range of 7,000 miles.

Quadruple Gun Mount For “Lead Avalanche”.

A DEADLY hail of bullets pours out of this murderous gun mount, devised by the British, when the gunner pulls the trigger. Four Lewis machineguns operate simultaneously by means of the mechanism, making it a formidable threat to low flying enemy aircraft. It also has many other uses.

Gun Folds Up Like Jackknife.

THE first 90 millimeter anti-aircraft gun ever built by private industry in America is shown here as it was inspected by army officers. The gun, as shown in the picture below, is constructed so that it will fold up almost as quickly as a jackknife snaps shut into position to be hauled by speeding truck. It was turned out by Allis-Chambers Co.

U.S. Planes Strafe Bridge In War Games.

THIS striking photograph of new units of the revitalized U.S. Army in action shows three planes strafing a pontoon bridge across the Wateree river in South Carolina. A jeep crew with machine-gun and automatic rifle in the foreground set up protective fire.

Designer Sees Battle Cruiser Of The Future.

HERE, in the illustration above, is a famous designer’s idea of how the battleship of the future will look. Its decks, gun-turrets and superstructure streamlined, the ship will offer no flat surfaces to enemy projectiles, and it will be much faster than modern vessels. The design is by George W. Walker.

Floating Docks For Battleship Repairs.

EFFICIENCY of English sea-fighters has been vastly increased by the daring naval achievement pictured here. Huge floating docks were constructed in English shipyards and towed hundreds of miles out into the Atlantic Ocean by a group of tiny tugboats. During the Bismarck battle, wounded British destroyers and cruisers were repaired almost on the scene of the naval duel.

Mammoth “Air Battleship” Rolls Out.

THE Martin XPB-2-M-1, built for the U. S. Navy, surpassed in size only by the Army’s B-19, comes out of her hangar for the first time at Baltimore, Md. A Culver Cadet is shown in front of her to make a comparison in size. She weighs 70 tons.

Gyroscope Controls Radio-Aerial Bomb.

JOHN HODGSON, a Mare Island and Navy Yard engineer, has developed the queer looking aerial weapon shown at the left, and the army is now testing it. It is a winged torpedo operating on a gyroscope principle and is designed to fly at 30,000 foot altitudes carrying a full load of bombs. Its inventor claims it may be sent diving at an enemy position by means of radio control waves. Inventor is shown at the left,’ with Bob Poison, the builder.

World’s Wackiest Wits (Jan, 1954)

2012-05-23T14:28:11Z

Being “syruped and feathered” looks absolutely horrible.

The Russian uniform hoax happened in October 1948.

World’s Wackiest Wits

Gagsters have been kicking us around for centuries. Some of their pranks are funny—some not so funny.

By I. B. Neer

THE hour was a few minutes past eleven on a fine Spring evening on the Cornell University campus. Most of the students were lounging in dormitories and fraternity houses when suddenly an urgent voice broke into a broadcast of radio music: “Stand by for a news bulletin.” A pause, then: “Russian planes have bombed London and Marseille. A flight has been sighted over Newfoundland.”

Listeners all over the campus were shocked into silence. Music continued to play and, in a moment, the crisp voice interrupted again: “Enemy planes are now flying over the U.S. Prepare for bombing attack!”

Word spread and panic gripped the entire campus. Every switchboard in Ithaca flashed lights as students called families, friends, and newspapers. In everyone’s mind was the awesome thought: World War III had finally exploded.

It was some hours before the students learned the truth. A group of 25 practical jokers, wearing hallowe’en masks, had invaded the studios of the university broadcasting station, tied up the student engineers and announcers and taken over. Then, for eight minutes, they interspersed news flashes with classical music. Luckily, the “invasion news” was not heard in the town of Ithaca itself since the university-run station broadcasts via a private line only to the Cornell campus. The 25 jokesters were promptly suspended from school but the ban was lifted a few months later when all had simmered down.

It was a king-size practical joke, but it wasn’t the first nor will it be the last. Perpetrators of hoaxes have been making folks miserable for centuries. They’ve fooled eminent scientists, noted doctors, and the general public with some of the weirdest most fiendish creations whipped up in fertile imaginations. They’ve caused riots, apoplectic rages, and no end of woe.

Hoaxes seem to run in cycles. It was just before the Cornell incident that one Stanley Gordon ricade in the street, hung up warning signs and proceeded to excavate. A traffic tieup ensued but a couple of policeman approached and obligingly stationed themselves in the middle of the road to detour cars around the hole, which was getting bigger and wider.

At the end of the day, the workman carefully fenced off their excavation and left. The hole stayed. It was there next morning and next afternoon. And the day after that. Citizens began yelling to the cops. The cops asked the department in charge of digging up the streets if it knew anything about it. The department’s chief looked blank and said no one on his staff had authorized it.

There was hell to pay when the blunt fact finally dawned that someone had simply hired a truck, sent a crew to dig up a city thoroughfare without authorization and then gone off, leaving the hole squarely in the laps of the city fathers. The culprit was not identified until much later when all had been forgotten, and presumably forgiven.

Another boredom-born stunt had all London aghast not long ago. Onto a lecture platform at the University of London strode a swarthy, bearded, myopic scholar, Dr. Mahesh Helai, who had been introduced as a famed Turkish authority on narcotics. Newspapers had been apprised of his talk and professors, students and science writers awaited the lecture.

They got it. “I will talk,” the doctor announced,. “on the pleasures of opium eating.” Eyes opened wide as he discoursed on the benefits to be derived therefrom. “I like it,” declared Dr. Helai. “One can consume it reasonably with no ill effects.” Then he waggled a finger at his audience and warned: “But it shouldn’t be given to children under five.”

The lecture lasted a full hour and next day the newspapers carried the entire story, with indignant comments. One staid journal assailed the professor’s outrageous recommendations and solemnly warned its leaders that, according to sound medical opinion, opium eating can lead to dire consequences.

Two days later the truth seeped out and faces were crimson from London to Oxford. Because it was in that latter citadel of learning that two Oxford undergraduates, finding life dull after exams, had recruited a member of the university’s dramatic society, did a masterful job of makeup and costuming, and palmed him off as “Dr. Helai, opium-eating Turk.” And only later did it dawn on anyone that “Helai” was pronounced—he he!

Sometimes practical jokers go to fantastic lengths and considerable expense to pull off a perfect rib. Like the time the late Hollywood producer, Mark Hellinger,. played host to restaurateur Toots Shor on the latter’s first visit to the film capital. Hellinger sent a representative, who had never met Shor, to greet him at the station and drive him to a prearranged destination. En route, Shor was astounded to see several huge billboards, flaringly advertising “the one and only Toots Shor restaurant.”

“Hey,” Shor sputtered, “I got the only Toots Shor eatery and it’s back in New York. Where does this guy get off?” The man at his side looked blank. Finally they stopped at a restaurant and as they approached the entrance a large, rotund character walked out to meet them—the exact likeness, down to every detail of dress and expression, of Mr. Shor.

Shor’s eyes bugged out and his smile froze. And when the fellow extended his hand and called out Toots’ exclusive and virtually copyrighted greeting, “Hiya, crum bum,” the New York visitor saw purple. He began to rant— until he heard guffaws and spotted Hellinger and a number of other movieland celebrities in a corner, doubled up with helpless laughter.

Everything had been carefully planted—-the billboards, and the phony Toots Shor, who had been hired from Central Casting!

But Shor himself can dish out a practical joke as well as scrambled eggs. He pulled a classic on Jackie Gleason, the rotund TV comic, not long ago. Gleason had been flaunting his ability as a pool player and one day Shor approached and asked if he’d care to take on a fellow named Joe.

Gleason assented readily and off they went. Just before the game started, Shor confided to Jackie that he was betting a huge sum on him. based on his boasts of his prowess.

The match began and Joe clicked off ball after ball, finishing and winning before Gleason could catch his breath. Shor grabbed a cue stick and took off after Jackie, howling with rage. Gleason ducked, then Toots stopped. “C’mere,” he called. “Meet the guy you played.” And a crestfallen, no-longer-boastful Gleason shook hands with Willie Mosconi, the world-famous pool and billiards champion.

Practical jokes can backfire too, and sometimes with a thunderous roar. Several years ago, a radio station in South America emulated Orson Welles’ man from Mars broadcast, airing a mythical but highly realistic “invasion” as Welles did. Welles, however, did not intend his broadcast as a prank, but the South American station did. Citizens at first were petrified with fright, and then, when the joke was revealed, they marched irately on the studios and promptly burned down the building.

It was only a few months ago that a State legislator pulled a practical joke—in no less a spot than the Arkansas House of Representatives—and then heartily wished he hadn’t. Representative James Bruton had been kidding a fellow lawmaker about the latter’s bachelor status. To lend point to his argument that it was better to be married than single, Bruton introduced a gag bill in the House to slap a $750 annual tax on bachelors in the State.

It was aimed only at the unwed representative, but Bruton had scarcely dropped the bill into the legislative hopper when all hell broke loose. He suddenly found himself besieged with a deluge of mail, telegrams, phone calls, and harsh knocks on his hotel room door. Newspaper editors wrote stinging editorials and commentators blasted him on radio news programs. Some bachelors threatened to leave the State for jobs elsewhere and constituents peppered Bruton with irate demands to kill the measure.

The bewildered Bruton, almost hidden by the pile of nasty letters on his desk, mopped his brow and announced to all and sundry that it was only a practical joke. The roars subsided, and Bruton vowed he’d never put a gag bill in the hopper again.

Harpo Marx, an inveterate practical joker, almost got arrested in the august jewelry house of Tiffany & Co. one day. Marx, unrecognizable in street clothes, filled his pockets with ten-cent-store trinkets and casually wandered into the store. He knew that Tiffany’s, with its many millions worth of fabulous gems, was guarded about as thoroughly as Fort Knox. Private detectives were all over the place and Harpo deliberately drew their attention by looking in the showcase and glancing furtively around.

Then when he knew he had been marked for watching, he strolled to the door and deliberately fell on his face. From his pockets tumbled dozens of assorted dime-store rings, bracelets, earrings, and assorted jewelry. Guards pounced on him, pinned him to the floor, then scurried around to retrieve the worthless trinkets from under customers’ feet and behind the showcases.

Harpo tried to explain but was squelched. He spent an uncomfortable several minutes in the clutches of the steely-eyed guards before he could convince them it was all a gag.

At that, Harpo only fooled one store. A New York reporter once bamboozled not only his own newspaper, but millions of people and high government officials as well. The victim was the New York Herald Tribune and this is the story of that sensational, out-size joke on a nation: It was a quiet August afternoon in the paper’s office when the city editor received a vague tip that a floating cabaret was anchored outside the 12-mile limit off Long Island, N.Y., serving illegal liquor to millionaires and chorus girls. It was Prohibition time and a scandal was in the making. A reporter was put on the story.

A couple of days later, the newsman came through. Tribune editors were elated at a clean scoop. Under a copyright line, they printed the story with a four-column headline on page one: “New Yorkers Drink Sumptuously on 17,000-ton Floating Cafe at Anchor 15 miles off Fire Island—Wine, Women, Jazz, and Revelry Turn Night to Day on Mystery Ship.” Illustrating the article was a three-column map showing the exact location of the vessel.

The reporter told of spending a night aboard the ship, which he found after scouring the ocean for two days in an open boat. In complete detail, he described the silverware, napkins and other fittings, and pointed out that all markings identifying the ship’s name and registry had been obliterated. He told of a jazz band furnishing the music “to which millionaires, flappers and chorus girls whirl on a waxed floor with the tang of the salt air in their lungs.”

Things happened fast. From Washington came orders to the Coast Guard headquarters in New York to drop everything and hunt the ship down. Prohibition enforcement officials were hauled on the carpet. Rival newspapers sent men ranging up and down the coast to find the floating palace.

Days passed but the vessel was not located. In fact, they still haven’t found it. It existed only in the reporter’s fertile imagination. He had simply seen a wonderful opportunity and couldn’t resist it. A few days after he realized the jig was up, he sent the paper a signed confession and never returned.

Practical jokers take keen delight in bamboozling the experts. A stunt that can fool a savant is considered infinitely more successful than an ordinary one, say, such as the inscription one man noticed recently on a large stone at the side of a road. “Turn me over,” it read. Curious, the man heaved and struggled and finally got the boulder on its back. On the other side was the laconic statement: “Now turn me back again so I can fool someone else.”

That’s everyday stuff in the hoaxer’s repertoire. More rewarding from the perpetrator’s point of view was the time an elephant was discovered on a barren beach on Staten Island, N. Y.

Now there was no circus or zoo on the island and no resident remembered having misplaced an elephant. Moreover, no elephants had been missing from New York, many miles across the water. How, then, had the pachyderm gotten there?

Scientists and natural historians immediately got embroiled in a controversy. Some said the elephant had swum all the way from Africa. Lengthy, footnoted treatises began appearing in the scientific journals on the amazing discovery that elephants possessed enough stamina to cross the ocean. But other experts scoffed, and the argument raged until the man responsible could contain himself no longer.

He stepped forward and identified himself. He was a press agent for a Coney Island amusement park and he admitted having charted a boat and ferried the elephant to the beach in the dead of night!

Equally satisfying to the hoaxers was the time, only last Winter, that eminent doctors swallowed whole the story that a woman had given birth to seven children in Santiago, Chile. The news broke early last December and sent medics into a tailspin because the chances of a successful septuplet birth are roughly 464,000,000,000 to one.

But there it was, confirmed by Santiago doctors and police authorities, and every newspaper in the U. S. headlined the sensational news. More bulletins followed—children were doing fine; they came along about an hour and three-quarters apart; the mother, a 32-year-old peasant woman, was recuperating nicely.

But then came the snapper—Chilean students were holding a gala carnival and had invented the entire thing to give zest to the proceedings. Posing as doctors, they had issued an elaborate series of reports, allowing no one to see “mother and children.” Even local medical men were completely fooled.

Then there was the time the Gemological Institute of America received a brown, bean-sized object in the mail, with a request for identification. The institute is staffed by expert mineralogists who check on all types of gems for custom officials, importers, dealers, insurance brokers, and police. The scientists worked for hours, using their lab equipment and massive tomes of gem minerals, but could not identify the stone.

They were still at it late in the day when a cleaning woman arrived with mop and bucket. Curious, she peered over the experts’ shoulders and finally queried: “Say, that’s a kidney stone, ain’t it? I had mine removed last year and they looked just like that.”

And darned if she wasn’t right!

Look who’s talking! (Feb, 1969)

2012-05-23T14:16:23Z

I can’t help but hear Bruce Willis’ voice when I see this ad.

Look who’s talking!

Sony/Superscope tape recorders

A tape recorder is your child’s first word. The very first. With all the hesitation, all the warmth, all the charm and all the sense of accomplishment captured exactly as it happened. Forever.

It is a bedside fairy tale to lull a growing mind to sleep at the end of a busy day. Or capture the fun and games of a seven-year-old’s birthday party.

It is a companion in the classroom. A convenient way to correspond from campus to home. Or perfect back-
ground music for courting lovers who themselves will someday soon begin the entire life’s cycle once again.

Because your life is so full of sound, our life is building the finest tape recorders in the world. And the most popular.

This year, Sony offers more than 30 totally different models to choose from. Monophonic. Stereophonic. Portable. Deck. System. Reel-to-reel. Cartridge. And cassette.

How many ways are there to use a tape recorder? Use your imagination…then use Sony.

Sony
You never heard it so good.

MI-stoppers V (Sep, 1954)

2012-05-23T14:16:12Z

MI-stoppers

SEA SERPENT? When Keith McRae of Sidney. Australia, hauled in this 12-foot-long oarfish. he thought he had caught one. This peculiar eel-like creature grows up to 40 feet in length.

WHALE OF A MOUTH comfortably holds three young Jonahs at Luna Park in Naples, Italy. The huge mammal died after being washed ashore there recently. It was stuffed, displayed at resort.

BIG BERTHA RIFLE doesn’t fire: it’s just magnified version of Garand M-I made of wood and aluminum and used to show troops at Fort Hood. Texas, how each part of weapon functions.

FITTING TASK. Worker selects tube from maze of twisted fittings used in jet plane wings at plant in Kansas City, Mo. There are 700 different shapes used to operate various hydraulic mechanisms.

NOBODY CLAIMS HOUSE IN MIDDLE OF STREET (May, 1929)

2012-05-23T14:16:00Z

NOBODY CLAIMS HOUSE IN MIDDLE OF STREET

CITY fathers of Santa Monica, California, were confronted with a perplexing problem recently when they woke up one morning to find that a full-sized residence had sprouted up overnight in the middle of one of its main streets, blocking traffic and causing much consternation on the part of neighbors. Upon investigation, it developed that a house mover had transported the building to a vacant lot under contract with the owner, only to discover that the lot didn’t belong to the house owner at all. The real owner of the lot protested to such good effect that the police set a special guard over the house to prevent its being moved onto the lot on the sly. Frantic officials were unable to discover any law forbidding the parking of houses in the street, but eventually hit upon the plan of tagging the building for obstructing traffic, and the owners were forced to appear in traffic court.

Misc. Helicopters (Jun, 1945)

2012-05-24T15:40:42Z

Contra-rotating main rotors were a feature of the HH-43B in service with the Air Force from the 1950′s to the 70′s

Misc Helicopters

Co-Axial Rotors. as on the Hiller-copter illustrated in the December Mechanix Illustrated, eliminate noise and vibration on this new helicopter designed by Vincent Bendix. The inventor claims it will be easier to operate and safer than an automobile. Two levers control the machine’s flight, and continuous autorotation makes it possible to fly it with safety at altitudes of only 100 to 200 feet.

First Jet-Powered helicopter is Antoine Gazda’s “helicospeeder.” Propelled and steered by jets, the machine has more speed, weight-carrying capacity, stability and controllability than the ordinary plane of its type, says the designer. The unorthodox construction omits the usual auxiliary rotor fixed at the tail of other helicopters to counteract torque. Perhaps this will be your postwar air “flivver.”

Hell-Cabin. First closeup of the control cabin of the new R6 Sikorsky helicopter shows almost 100% visibility achieved by transparent plastic construction. The 3-blade rotor type machine has a tip-to-tip diameter of 38 feet. Tail rudder measures 7 feet across. The gross weight is 2,600 pounds, the speed exceeds 100 m.p.h., and it can climb 4,000 feet in 7 minutes.

coffee nerves? (May, 1934)

2012-05-23T23:44:59Z

coffee nerves?

Exhausted? Suffering from jittery nerves… sleepless nights? Many times coffee’s the trouble… coffee containing caffeine.

Give your nerves a chance to relax! Switch to Kellogg’s Kaffee-Hag Coffee! Blend of finest Brazilian and Colombian coffees, 97% caffeine-free. Doesn’t drive you… can’t upset you… can’t cost you one wink of sleep.

And it’s delicious! Kellogg’s new million-dollar process takes out 97% the bitter caffeine … but leaves in all the rich, natural flavor …makes it marvelously mellow. You can cook it longer, make it stronger… still it won’t turn bitter. Try it for three weeks!

Ground or in the Bean. ..roasted by Kellogg in Battle Creek. Vacuum packed. Satisfaction guaranteed, or money back. Buy it from your grocer, or send 15c and coupon for sample.

Send 15c for Generous Sample Can KELLOGG CO., Battle Creek. Mich. Please send me a can of Kellogg’s Kaffee-Hag Coffee (97% caffeine-free) and booklet. I enclose 15c in stamps. (Only 1 sample to a family.)

STRIKE IT RICH IN AFRICA (Nov, 1956)

2012-05-22T13:18:49Z

The only paragraph where he mentions the actual people of Africa:

“Racial tension is another vital consideration. Kenya, for instance, has its terrible Mau Maus, now on the wane but still something to reckon with. In the Union of South Africa, there is immense, unorganized resentment growing among the non-whites against the white man’s absolute, rigid supremacy. And a good place to stay away from is the shooting-war area of Algeria where the tide of hate runs high. But the timid and overly delicate have never thrived in the world’s frontiers. ”

STRIKE IT RICH IN AFRICA

Cast a glance at the Bright Continent—”incomparably the best source of potential wealth waiting development in the world.”

By Lester David

THE YOUNG man knelt on the dry ground of the Bomi Hills in Liberia, a look of intense concentration on his tanned face. Then he rose and slowly made his way back to headquarters, deep in his own thoughts.

This was Lansdell K. Christie, a young American serving with the U.S. Army in Africa. During his off-duty hours, he would wander into the hills, combing the area for valuable minerals. Day after day he went out alone; finally he became convinced that a vast treasure in iron ore lay beneath the Liberian soil. The rest is history because Christie struck it rich out there. Eventually, the lone American got the Republic Steel Co. to invest in his Liberia Mining Co.; at last report he was hauling out a million tons of high grade ore a year.

The story of Lansdell Christie is just one of many about exciting goings-on in the new Africa. Toss away that phrase the “Dark Continent.” In little more than a generation, the light of Western progress has shone into the Stone Age wilderness of many areas and now Africa, the untamed, is bustling with modern development. The sons of cannibals now mine the raw materials of the Atomic Age. And buy appliances from Sears-Roebuck!

There are untapped riches in Africa the likes of which man has not yet seen. Africa has uranium, gold and silver. It has enormous deposits of coal, iron, manganese, chrome, copper, nickel, lead and antimony.

There are potential cotton empires to be carved out of the vast plains. There are coffee, tea and cocoa plantations which will go to the venturesome. There is a fantastic amount of virtually every * kind of valuable timber.

Listen to what people who know have to say about the new Africa: Item: John Gunther, the world-famous reporter, traveled 40,000 miles and visited 105 different localities to gather material for his monumental new work, Inside Africa. His conclusion: The continent “is incomparably the greatest potential source of wealth awaiting development in the world.”

Item: “Boom hits the Congo,” says U.S. News and World Report, the authoritative news journal. The Belgian Congo is “Africa’s treasure house,” says another investigator.

Who, besides the adventurous Mr. Christie, is pioneering down there? And who is cashing in on the little, and not-so-little, side businesses—providing con- sumer goods and services—which blossom when the economy of a nation starts burgeoning? .

Start with the tale of John T. Williamson, a tall, taciturn Canadian who had found his way to Tanganyika on the eastern coast in a search for diamonds.

Williamson searched the Tanganyika territory for four years. Finally, on a March day, his ancient automobile became mired in the muck. Williamson sighed, hunted up a team of horses, hitched them to the car and snapped the reins. The car was yanked out but the prospector’s eyes stayed riveted on the deep slits the tires had made in the mud.

There were two large stones, the color of soapy glass. Williamson bent and reverently took them in his hands. It had begun to rain and water sluiced down his hat and into his boots but he didn’t care. Williamson remained kneeling, the diamonds in his hands.

The adventurous Canadian had made his strike. It became the richest diamond mine in Tanganyika and it now sells more than $10,000,000 worth of gems each year.

Williamson, let’s face it, was a rugged, wide-open-spaces kind of pioneer, as was Christie, but not all the new fortunes are being carved out the risky, adventurous way.

James A. Cavanaugh was an insurance salesman who figured he’d do a lot better in an area where there weren’t too many other insurance salesmen around. Accordingly, he took a long, long trip through Northern and Southern Rhodesia, and at the end of his journey he added up the score: Total number of insurance policies sold—597. Profit to James A. Cavanaugh—$200,000!

And the enterprising salesman was not the only one to whom this same general idea has occurred. Americans are now “discovering” Rhodesia with outstanding success, to wit: Several have opened U.S.-style motels, complete with bars, restaurants and good service. They are fantastically successful. There are also a few drive-in movies, Yank-owned and coining money.

Americans are opening up barber shops, service agencies of various kinds, small food emporiums, and doing fine.

In Central Africa, there is Bert Howard, a former G. I. who runs a thriving ostrich-feather export house.

Another American exports crocodile skins; still another buys and exports ivory. One of the most unusual exports from the continent is anti-snake bite serum; it’s mighty profitable for the Nyasaland snake farmer who dreamed up the idea.

Success stories? You’ll find them all over Africa. Emile Pagnon came to Morocco dead broke at the age of 32. Now he has 4,000 acres of the finest ranch land and is one of the wealthiest Europeans in the country. In the Congo an immigrant asked himself, “How about a resort for the folks who are getting rich here?” He scraped up money to start one: the Lido Pool at Elizabethville, which soon became a favored oasis for wealthy Europeans.

In Monrovia, capitol of Liberia, there is a local institution called the Pepper Bird. It’s a combination restaurant, night club and assembly hall for government functions. It has African murals from Greenwich Village, N. Y., and a juke box that plays hill-billy music. It’s owner? A barrel-chested Syrian-American from Brooklyn.

Interested? Then let’s get to some basic info on how you can get there. First, about jobs for the guys who just want to get on the premises and then look about: two classes of jobs are available—those in U. S. Government work and those in private industry.

For government jobs, the ordinary civil service regulations do not apply as a general rule. The agency doing the hiring generally picks the people it wants without even consulting the Civil Service Commission.

To get a line on U. S. job opportunities in Africa write to Office of Personnel, Department of Agriculture, Washington 25, D. C., for the story on jobs for farm specialists; to Division of Personnel Management, Department of the Interior, Washington 25, D. C., for information on jobs in mining, waterpower development, fishery management, biology, geology, land management; to Commander, U. S. Naval Activities, Port Lyautey, c/o Fleet Post Office, New York, N. Y., for the word on Navy jobs for civilians in French Morocco.

For general information send 15 cents to the Government Printing Office, Washington 25, D. C., for the booklet Federal Jobs Outside The Continental United States. You can also try the U. S. Employment Service, Washington 25, D. C.

For jobs in American industries in Africa, drop a line to the U. S. Chamber of Commerce in any country there and ask who’s hiring. Addresses of the Chambers can be gotten from the U. S. C. of C., Washington 6, D. C. Ask for the free listing of American Chambers of Commerce in Foreign Countries.

A good example of the Yank outfits in Africa is Firestone Tire and Rubber Co. Firestone employs foresters, agricultural specialists, nurses, lab technicians, sanitation engineers, accountants, mechanics and machinists. (Write to Personnel Dept., The Firestone Tire and Rubber Co., Akron 17, Ohio.) To go to Africa on your own, you need (a) a passport and (b) a visa, the former obtained from your country, the latter from the country for which you’re headed.

The various countries “have different admission requirements, but generally you need either a certain amount of money or a job to get in. More detailed information can be obtained from the countries themselves.

For dope on South Africa, write to the Government Information Office, Union of South Africa, 655 Madison Ave., New York 21, N. Y.

For information on Liberia, write to the Public Relations Counsel, Embassy of Liberia, 5201 16th St. N. W., Washington, D. C.’ Information will also be given by the Liberia Consulate General, 220 Broadway, New York 38, N. Y. Liberian consulates are also located in Chicago, San Francisco, Los Angeles, New Orleans, Miami, Houston and Philadelphia.

For data on the Belgian Congo, write to either of the following: Baron Dhanis, Belgian Congo Affairs Attache, 1715 22nd St. N. W., Washington, D. C., or Belgian Government Information Center, 630 5th Ave., New York 16, N. Y.

Can you take money out of Africa if you hit the jackpot so hard it clangs? That depends on the country—each has its own regulations on this—but most countries do permit individuals to take out a percentage of their earnings.

Now obviously, while it’s true that a rip-roaring boom is underway in Africa, there are drawbacks too. Let’s list some: Climate is one factor which must be considered strongly. South Africa, Liberia, coastal areas in the north generally have excellent climatic conditions but there are sections deep inside where the jungle is steaming, the rain seems to fall incessantly and the insects make life one long itch.

Racial tension is another vital consideration. Kenya, for instance, has its terrible Mau Maus, now on the wane but still something to reckon with. In the Union of South Africa, there is immense, unorganized resentment growing among the non-whites against the white man’s absolute, rigid supremacy. And a good place to stay away from is the shooting-war area of Algeria where the tide of hate runs high. But the timid and overly delicate have never thrived in the world’s frontiers. You can’t go fortune-hunting anywhere with an absolute guarantee of personal safety and the assurance that your finer feelings will never be offended. Africa today is the Bright Continent, lit with a blaze of opportunity for the venturesome.

ELEPHANT DISPLACES LION AS KING OF BEASTS (May, 1929)

2012-05-22T13:18:38Z

Well that’s a useful article…

ELEPHANT DISPLACES LION AS KING OF BEASTS

LIONS have been enjoying the title of “King of Beasts” which really belongs to the elephant, according to Harry C. Ostrander, naturalist. The elephant does not

Possess the regal bearing of the lion, but he can think faster and has a remarkable memory, as witness the truism of the showmen, “an elephant never forgets an injury.”

Could you be the last woman to be using just one deodorant? (Mar, 1969)

2012-05-22T13:18:28Z

Could you be the last woman to be using just one deodorant?

Don’t be.

Find out about FDS,* the other deodorant. FDS means feminine hygiene deodorant spray. Gentle, lightly scented… almost warm. A deodorant spray formulated specifically to help eliminate odor from the external vaginal area. FDS contains the best known odor-fighting and antibacterial ingredients available to modern science.

Effective, gentle, FDS can be used often.

Even on those “special” days.

That means absolute confidence for any woman…anywhere…any time.

FDS…the first really feminine deodorant.

*FDS is a Trademark of Alberto-Culver Co. ©Copyright 1969 Alberto-Culver Co., Melrose Park, Ill. All rights reserved. Available in Canada.

NEW for the HOME (Jan, 1954)

2012-05-22T13:18:18Z

NEW for the HOME

THREE-IN-ONE carriage is adaptable for going to market or carrying baby. Bottom folds up. can be used to carry bags and cases. Made in Germany.

RUB-A-DUB-MIT has built-in washboard of soft but tough Plastisol. Cleans nylons, silk lingerie, other light laundry. Vail Corp.. Paterson. N.J.

BURGLAR ALARM, right, screws to any door or window. Winds like clock, rings loudly ii intruder breaks in. Beaver & Beaver, Sterling. Cal.

CANDLELIGHT CARAFES keep coffee warm, add decorative touch. Set includes four two-cup carafes, with stands and candles. Silex. Hartford. Conn.

SNO-FLY cuts path 20 inches wide. 14 inches deep in hard packed snow. Self-propelled, power-driven blades eject snow. Merry Mfg.. Edmonds. Wash.

Super Terminal for Trucks (Sep, 1947)

2012-05-22T13:18:06Z

I grew up right near this building and it really is quite massive. It is now one of UPS’s main hubs in Manhattan.

Super Terminal for Trucks

Colossal union truck terminals like this will help reduce the paralyzing congestion of city streets.

By William Winter

IF ANYTHING bothers the people of the New York metropolitan area as much as the significance of the A-bomb, it is their diabolical traffic problem. Having tried bridges, vehicular tunnels, and express highways, the Port of New York Authority is now doing something spectacular about the 2,500 intercity buses and 5,000 trucks that daily jam the city streets.

In midtown, near the Lincoln Tunnel that runs under the Hudson to New Jersey, will be erected a huge “Grand Central Bus Terminal” and, further downtown, close to the mouth of the Holland Tunnel, through which pour roaring trucks like the Third Army tanks on a break-through, will be built a $5,000,000 “Union Station” for trucks. A companion terminal will be built across the river in Newark. These two terminals, and the revolutionary ideas in truck handling that will be inaugurated, are of special significance to all cities.

The sprawling downtown building will end the wasteful use of big tractor-trailer units for pick-ups and deliveries throughout the city, for interchange of freight between numerous scattered independently-owned terminals, and cut the present waste of smaller pick-up and delivery equipment through inefficient operation. When the Union Terminal is completed, huge over-the-road trucks and tractor- trailer equipment will funnel into the terminal, and pick-up and delivery will be performed by “mosquito fleets” of small trucks. The mosquito-fleet operators will be assigned one or more of 36 “P and D” zones.

These truck terminals are no run-of-the-mill affairs. The fact that two-thirds of the merchandise freight that comes into New York each day arrives in trucks, means that the transportation experts have gone all out in the design of the New York and Newark terminals. They are the first of a series.

Located between Washington and Greenwich Streets, on New York’s lower west side, and extending in a single unit from Spring Street, at the Holland Tunnel, three blocks north to West Houston Street, the New York terminal is 1,000 feet long and 160 feet wide. This happens to be 200 feet longer than a monster plant like Republic Aviation.

The terminal looks very much like a modern factory. Its roof will accommodate possible helicopter cargo pick-up and delivery—a Bell helicopter already has made a demonstration delivery to the site—as well as parking place for 70 complete tractor-trailer units. Instead of blocking surrounding streets, waiting trucking will be parked on the roof.

Along the sides of the terminal will be bays for 144 trucks (80 over-the-road, 56 local, and eight for expansion). Running almost the entire length of the building at its center will be an 800×80-foot island or platform equipped with an overhead conveyor. Small trailers with telescoping masts can be quickly attached or removed from the conveyor. Continuously moving at the rate of 100 feet per minute, the conveyor travels down one side of the island, crosses at the end, then goes up the other side and around the end to complete the circle. In one revolution, the conveyor will handle as much as 80 tons of freight. It is an interesting fact that the conveyor is actuated by a single variable-speed five-hp electric motor. If it proves possible to handle freight at a faster clip, the speed of the conveyor can be stepped up. A transverse crane at one end of the platform will provide means to lift across the island weights up to 10 tons. When the trucks are backed to the platform they will stand entirely within the building line.

Under the present system, or lack of system, big tractor-trailers frequently pick up or deliver shipments at from six to 12 widely-scattered addresses. A freight shipment through New York involves five separate loadings and unloadings just to be transferred from one over-the-road carrier to another for delivery beyond the city.

Like a city in itself, the terminal contains two floors of offices which will be rented to tenant carriers, mosquito fleet operator’s, local truckmen, and allied business firms. There will be facilities for banking, doctor’s quarters, a restaurant, locker and shower rooms, meeting rooms, drivers’ call rooms, and conference rooms. To step up efficiency there will be a pneumatic tube communicating system, an inter-office communicating system, and an automatic electric-eye method of checking the flow of parcels through the terminal.

Handling a capacity of 2,000 tons daily, the New York terminal will be of prime importance in reducing the numbers of trucks on the streets. The Newark terminal (the biggest in the world), 1,200 feet long, with a capacity of 2,500 tons, is expected to save up to $432,000 in truck transport costs each year.

City fathers and truckers from coast to coast are keeping a thoughtful eye on the Port of New York Authority’s offensive on the world’s number one traffic jam. •

Why Boys “Lose Respect” (Mar, 1964)

2012-05-21T14:34:28Z

Why Boys “Lose Respect”

Why do some boys feel that a girl who permits them sexual intercourse lowers herself?

By Lester A. Kirkendall, Ph.D.

A distinguished leader in the field of sex education, Dr. Kirkendall is Professor of Family Life at Oregon State Univ. and author of “Sex Education as Human Relations,” “Premarital Intercourse and Interpersonal Relationships,” and many other writings.

“After that I lost all respect for her.” This is a common reaction on the part of boys after they have had premarital intercourse with a girl.

“Loss of respect” is a loose term, to say the least. As boys use it it may mean almost any unfavorable change in feeling. The phrase is so commonly used, in fact, that loss of respect is often thought to be an inevitable result of premarital intercourse. This is not so.

What then are the real reasons behind this so-called “loss of respect?” I have discussed the matter with both young men and young women. The following explanations resulted.

1. The boy actually never respected the girl before sexual intercourse occurred. He may fail to recognize what his feelings actually are, and he will often deny this disrespect, even to himself. Self-deception comes easily in his eagerness for sexual intercourse. Once the novelty and excitement of the physical act wears off, his real feelings come to the surface.

If before intercourse the boy can cover up his contempt, he can go ahead without feeling too guilty. He may feel that having intercourse is wrong, but having it with a girl one has no use for is even worse. So he refuses to recognize what he actually feels.

Boys who do not believe in the double standard are likely to feel guilty about having intercourse with girls they don’t respect; “double-standard boys” usually find it easier to have intercourse with girls for whom they feel no respect.

2. Sometimes disrespect is produced by lewd, coarse jests made by close male friends of the boy involved. Boys often regard sexual experience as evidence that they have reached manhood. This being so, they feel the need to tell other boys about it.

Even though the boy and girl may have respected each other, and behaved in a dignified way, boy friends are unlikely to treat their relationship that way. They are likely to see it as a salacious, exciting lark. It becomes very difficult for the boy to maintain his feelings of dignity when close friends begins to refer to his relationship with the girl in coarse, vulgar language.

Even though the boy opened the way for such comments from his friends by telling them about his relationship, he may still find his feelings changed by their remarks.

Sometimes the fact that a couple is having intercourse becomes general knowledge among their friends, and the couple knows this. The knowledge that others know certainly removes the sense of exclusiveness which the couple probably felt at first. They begin to fear that still others, perhaps their parents may find out. These fears in turn produce tensions, and out of them often come quarrels and loss of respect between the partners.

Unless the partners have a great amount of affection and a strong loyalty to each other, feelings of contempt are likely to build up as a defense against feelings of uneasiness and fear.

3. Some boys feel that in a secret, hidden sexual relationship the girl should be coy and resisting. She should require seduction on each association. If the girl abandons this role, and becomes enthusiastic, aggressive, or even seductive herself, she may very well be greeted with a feeling of disrespect on the part of her partner.

4. A girl may lose the respect of her male sexual partner through her use of sex slang or folk terms. As one boy put it, “I just can’t, stand a girl who is dirty-mouthed.” Yet his partner had spoken only in ordinary sexual slang.

He himself had used these terms in talking with the girl. There is a good chance that since he had used them she felt it was correct for her to use them also.

5. Once intercourse begins, girls often respond by becoming keenly interested in getting engaged or married. Girls involved in premarital intercourse are often quite insecure. To become engaged or to have the promise of marriage would provide a girl much needed security. So she begins to press for expressions of love, and to force the boy to commit himself. The boy, however, may be quite unready or quite unwilling for such an involvement.

As a consequence of this pressure the boy may lose interest in the relationship, find another girl, or for some other reason wish to be free. To “lose respect” for the girl provides him with an excellent excuse for ending the relationship without causing him to feel guilty.

6. Sometimes when her boyfriend begins to lose interest, the girl senses this. In order to keep him she may behave so as to create a lack of respect. She may have permitted or even encouraged intercourse to begin with as a way of promoting the relationship. She may now reason that since a stronger relationship did seem to result from intercourse, the way to revive interest is to make intercourse even more available. And so she becomes sexually aggressive.

Girls who behave this way are often criticized by the boys because “intercourse got to be all she thought about.” It is very easy for a naive, insecure girl to overplay her hand. It is just as easy for a boy who was never very deeply involved anyway to “lose respect.”

7. Some boys wan! exclusive possession of their sexual partners. A boy who holds this view may be tortured with the thought, “if she had intercourse with me, she would have it with someone else.” The girl herself, by what she says or does, may create and foster this suspicion. A flirtatious, provocative girl can easily do this, and her partner will quite likely respond with a growing feeling of contempt.

8. Breaking a relationship, particularly one in which there was some affection, is never easy. It is even harder when sexual intercourse has been a part of it. It is especially hard for young people who lack the courage to face reality, who are unskilled in dealing with tangled emotions and who are unable to speak frankly about sex.

As a result breaks are often made by roundabout methods and in dishonest ways. Lies, false fronts, and advantage-taking become a part of making the break.

In a situation such as this, to safeguard his own conscience a boy often “loses respect.” He is thus able to look back on what he has done with less guilt and disturbance than if he had “respected” the girl.

9. A “loss of respect” for the girl may be the boy’s reaction to a sexual relationship which failed to meet expectations. Inexperienced boys especially, often expect more in pleasure, thrill and excitement from sex than is possible. The sensory pleasure may be little, the girl may cry or otherwise create a problem, or the back seat of a car may prove an unsuitable place for a sexual relationship.

In other words, sex just didn’t live up to expectations. Intercourse was supposed to be the most satisfying of all intimacies; instead it produced tensions and hard feelings.

10. Loss of respect may be the to-be-expected outcome of managing sex by ritual. Since young people cannot talk freely about sex, they often conduct their sexual affairs in a stereotyped way. Thus, in petting the boy makes an advance, the girl resists, he tries again and gets a bit further before she stops him. One step leads to another. Both know what comes next, and both know they will end up with petting.

The girl may then cry to prove her virtue, and the ritual is completed. In such a relationship, when intercourse finally occurs the loss of respect by the boy may be as much a part of the ritual as pushing him away and crying is for the girls. The boy is expected to lose respect and he does.

Clearly a loss of respect for a girl by a boy who has engaged in premarital intercourse with her may arise from a number of causes. Their very number however, indicates how hard it is in our double-standard, sexually-confused culture to combine premarital intercourse with a pleasant, secure dating relationship. This is especially true when the partners are youthful and immature.

HOW DOES IT WORK? – Oil Lamp Fan (Nov, 1956)

2012-05-22T17:53:06Z

Stirling cycle fans have quite the following.

HOW DOES IT WORK?
EARL CROSS doesn’t know what makes his antique rotary fan work—but why argue with a cooling breeze? In the base of tlie fan is an oil lamp which heats a cylinder containing two pistons. Light the lamp and the blades slowly pick up speed. The fans were part of a shipment made up for a long forgotten African hunting expedition.

New Road Paving Makes High Speed Safe (Sep, 1933)

2012-05-21T14:32:05Z

Those future cars look kind of like Light Cycles from Tron.

New Road Paving Makes High Speed Safe
Superspeedways from coast to coast are visioned following the recent discovery in a Boston, Mass., pavement testing laboratory of a new type of non-skid, resilient asphalt paving. It will permit motor cars to travel at speeds up to 100 miles an hour, the laboratory’s engineers say. Walled-in traffic lanes, with block signals, would permit such speeds in safety. Hundreds of different kinds of pavement were tested, and Sir Malcolm Campbell, world’s speed king was consulted during the tests.

Chase & Sanborn Coffee: You hear a bigger whoosh. (Oct, 1955)

2012-05-21T14:31:42Z

That is a really weird ampersand they use. The OCR software thought it was a £ and I can see why.

You hear a bigger whoosh.

You smell a fresher aroma.

You taste an extra richness.

Why? Because Chase & Sanborn “Dome Top” Coffee is fresher than any other leading brand. It’s the only one that’s pressure packed. And pressure packing preserves coffee freshness and flavor better than vacuum cans or bags.

Chase & Sanborn Coffees are served by more fine hotels and restaurants throughout America than any other brand.
Now! Chase & Sanborn’s Delicious Flavor— yours in the NEW FULL-BODIED INSTANT

First instant coffee so full-bodied it makes truly satisfying breakfast coffee!
Chase & Sanborn

THE COFFEE THAT TELLS YOU IT’S FRESHER!

TEARDROP TRAILER HOLDS ARC-WELDING OUTFIT (Jul, 1937)

2012-05-21T14:39:23Z

TEARDROP TRAILER HOLDS ARC-WELDING OUTFIT

A streamline automobile trailer just constructed by Clyde Hocks, of Milwaukee, Wis., houses a complete arc-welding outfit. Built from scrap parts, the two-wheeled unit makes it easy to transport the gasoline motor and generator necessary to furnish the electric current for the work. A control panel is mounted in the rear of the trailer.

New Miracle of Science: 60 SECOND PLASTIC SURGERY (Jan, 1954)

2012-05-21T14:31:19Z

New Miracle of Science: 60 SECOND PLASTIC SURGERY

A beautifying plastic operation now is possible within 60 seconds. This is no joke but the pleasant truth for all those who suffer from the. ill-effects of a disfiguring accident or hereditary ugliness. It may be a broken nose that mars the appearance of its owner, or perhaps a hollow spot in the forehead due to a war injury. In many other cases it is just a question of vanity or the need for particularly attractive features in one’s business. Whatever the reason for a change in a person’s appearance, a new revolutionary method devised by a plastic surgeon in Hamburg. Germany, allows him or her to have it done during one afternoon.

A plastic material, the formula for which is secret, has been developed by the Frankfurt firm of Kulzer, makers of material for artificial teeth and other similar products. They have called it Palavit. In its first stage Palavit is a semi-liquid. Loaded into a syringe it can be injected under the patient’s skin just where a correction is needed. Once it is under the skin the doctor still has time to mold the nose— or whatever part of the body it may be— according to the wishes of the patient or his own cosmetic judgment, before the inserted Palavit hardens to bonelike consistency.

It was just by accident that the doctor in Hamburg hit upon the idea to perform a plastic operation in such a bloodless, painless, scarless—and, above all rapid—manner. He had been experimenting with plastic operations during World War II, trying to rectify deformations suffered by soldiers on the field of battle. He had started by inserting plastic splints made of Paladon, the predecessor of Palavit. The little splints that he used were, of course, rather hard, and in order to place them the doctor had to perform some slight surgery on the patient. This worked very nicely but unfortunately always left a few scars, slight but visible. In the meantime Palavit was being developed as an aid to the Paladon splints and when the doctor saw how well and how rapidly the new liquid plastic substance hardened, he immediately got an idea. He would eliminate the splints altogether and inject the Palavit right into that part of the body which needed to be built up.

It took him some years, of course, to improve and refine the method to its present remarkable state, but it was well worth it, as the series of photographs on these two pages readily show. Indeed, it now takes a mere minute to give a person a new face— and an entirely new personality.

When Mae West Went To Jail For ‘Sex’ (Nov, 1959)

2012-05-18T21:29:50Z

The Adam & Eve sketch from 1937 may be heard here.

When Mae West Went To Jail For ‘Sex’

The Come Up ‘n See Me Sometime girl turned a bare cell into a $1 million publicity sell.

By MICHAEL MATTHEW

MAE WEST, THE GREATEST teasetress of them all—the naughty-hipped seductress who turned bluenoses red with the line “C’m up’n see me sometime,” and who made the public believe, “I can do more with my voice and eyes than another woman can do turning herself inside out”—failed to bewitch the authorities only once.

She landed in the cooler which she promptly turned into a gilded cage.

Described as the “Love Goddess,” and the “High-Priestess of Sex,” Mae West has come to represent what psychologists consider the “titillator of the American libido.” When asked her opinion of psychologists, it was rumored her reply was: “What they know about sex couldn’t excite a mosquito. They’re a pack of brain-hole peepers!”

Playing a bit part in her first movie, she founded her Hollywood career on one line.

When a checkroom girl saw Mae’s furs, she gasped, “For goodness sake!” Mae winked: “Goodness had nothing to do with it, dearie.”

When she was signed to portray a sultry honky-tonk keeper opposite W. C. Fields in My Little Chickadee, Hollywood and the fans expected verbal fireworks to explode. No one had ever been masterful enough to top the barbarous sarcasms of W.C.,—a high-ranking star of the day.

But when the haughty hussy hit town, Hokumville was stunned with disbelief when she converted W.C. Fields into an ardent admirer. He respected her talents and was disinclined to tangle with a woman whose reputation for cutting wit was as outrageous as his own. He was ordinarily a cherubic cut-up when on the movie set, but he became subdued and gentlemanly when Miss Mae approached the cameras. Some claim that when she stood beside him a flirtatious twitch developed in his mammoth nose. The movie was a box-office smash and they remained fast friends.

Mae West began her career playing child roles. She played her first grown-up role as a chorus girl in an Ed Wynn show and from that bit part on, there was no stopping her. While the average chorus girl is lost in the mass of cavorting pulchritude, the magnetism of Mae West was quickly felt.

Men watched her with perspiring imaginations and women glared at her with envy. A star with rare and remarkable brilliance was being born and even today many people boast, “The second I spotted her I knew she had more than what it takes.” Her reputation as a scathing wit began to show when one evening she was overheard to demolish a snazzy-suited masher with: “Your mother should have had children.”

She once commented about her own character: “I used to be Snow White but I drifted.” When an enterprising statistician discovered that Miss West had the exact proportions of Venus de Milo, she laughingly remarked, “I’ve got it on her. I’ve got two arms and I know how to use them. Besides, dearie, I’m not marble.” And no mathematician has yet been able to disprove her erudite theory on geometry: “A curved line is the loveliest distance between two points.”

Though she is loved for her kindness to unknown and struggling performers, a noted movie director once stated, “Hell hath no fury like Mae when scorned.” He was probably thinking of the time when Miss West, angered by the crude antics of a loud-mouthed actor, said: “That guy’s no good. His mother should have thrown him away and kept the stork.”

Though she was usually aware of just how far she could carry her personal crusade to make “sex” a national necessity, she has, now and then, miscalculated. In 1937, appearing as guest star on the Edgar Bergen-Charlie McCarthy radio show, Miss West created a furore that almost shattered the airways.

In a skit about the Garden of Eden, Miss West was assigned the role of Eve opposite Don Ameche, who was Adam. Bergen was the snake in the grass. The script was cleared by NBC and the rehearsals went smoothly. But when Miss West, the mistress of vocal innuendo who can make the phrase “how now, brown cow” sound like an invitation to an evening of delights befitting a sultan—performed her far from subtle reading and salty ad-libs she was banned from the air waves for twelve years. Radio listeners who were fortunate enough to hear that program have never forgotten her memorable reading.

When her play Sex (written by Mae under the pseudonym of Janet Mast) opened in 1926 at Daly’s Theater in New York, a horrified gasp arose from the theater going public—but front row seats quickly became more valuable than blue-chip stocks. Sex and censorship became the noisy topic of the times. If all the newspaper headlines were cut out and laid end-to-end, the ballyhoo could have been read in China.

The New York Times in its review the next day suggested that since the play was laid in a Trinidad brothel, in Montreal and Westchester County, “the authorities of all these places have ample cause for protest.” The aforementioned locales did not take the Times’ advice—but, spurred by puritanical citizens and prodded by opportunistic politicians, the police raided the show ten months later. (Why they waited so long, no one knows.) The Queen of Curves was carted off to court and charged with “corrupting the morals of youth.” Miss West indignantly denied the charge and claimed her play was “educational.”

But on the night Sex was raided by a Deputy Chief Inspector and ten stalwart policemen, the mistress of the quick-quip was unusually unquiptive—allowing the producer, William Morgenstern to do all the talking. Amid the bursting of flash bulbs and hordes of cheering sidewalk spectators, Miss West and twenty others in the cast were coralled and helped into taxis and driven to Night Court where they were received by a magistrate and by Acting Mayor Joseph V. McKee.

Then the farce got underway.

The courtroom was crammed and jammed by chattering spectators and noisy with the popping of flash bulbs. The Acting Mayor consulted with the battery of lawyers and arranged bail. Then he approached the bench to sit beside the magistrate while the festive prisoners were arraigned.

(It was rumored that McKee had, several days earlier, sent out warnings of the impending police action to all concerned in order to be certain the victims were prepared with sufficient money for bail.) Murmured opinions filled the courtroom. “Mae West will wrap the law around her luscious finger.” One enthusiastic fan whispered to her, “Knock them dead with a wiggle, Mae.” Another excited beholder crackled, “Remand her to my custody, Judge. There’s plenty room in my house.” Miss West, clad in a gown designed to set off her hour-glass figure, waved an arm glistening with diamonds, indicating to her admirers that she would stand pat and defend the public’s right to enjoy Sex.

She was released on $1,000 bail while the other performers were required to put up only $500. McKee brought the fracas to a grand climax by declaring that “. . . the policy of the city … is to make the criminal court the arbiter of what is decent and what is not decent on the New York stage.” Miss West, moving with her famous undulating stroll, left the courtroom free on bail.

After the raiding of Sex and two other plays, The Captive and Virgin Man, the drive against so-called obscenity and nudity spread like a plague and raid-happy cops had a field day. In a Brooklyn dance hall seven young women were arrested for not wearing stockings, although the dancers were otherwise “more or less clad in satin.” Street corners were cleared of curbstone Romeos. Ladies of the night ran for shelter.

But though they were facing trial, the plays continued. On February 13, 1927, the newspapers reported that Sex and the other two raided shows were playing to jammed houses. The name Mae West became synonymous with SEX. Wherever she went people pointed and said, “There goes Sex.”

On February 16, Magistrate G.W. Simpson ordered the trial of the Sex company, charging them with putting on an indecent show. The trial was to be conducted in the Court of Special Sessions.

Testifying before the magistrate, Inspector James Bolan cited his personal and tempered opinions against the play. He read from a long list of notes and often paused to collect his thoughts, attempting to express in chaste language the shocking goings-on in Sex. (Scores of spectators left because his notes were not as lurid as they anticipated.) Bolan, a naive drama critic, referred to “sugar daddy,” as “sugar dandy” and quoted a line as, “Don’t call this place a dump.” He was quickly corrected by Assistant D. A. James G. Wallace who amended the line to, “Don’t call this joint a dump.”

Wallace was accused of bias and of trying to hold the court in session for as long as he could so as to make the actors miss their evening performance. But quick action on the part of the defending attorneys closed the proceedings at an early hour. However, Wallace became a key figure in the court drama. With a loud and garish display of histrionics, he managed to bring the state’s case to a triumphant conclusion.

In court, on March 5th, the Sex company pleaded not guilty. Miss West, who had been seemingly withdrawn and uninterested throughout the previous proceedings (often keeping herself busy by applying her make up and blowing court dust from the fur collar of her coat, finally broke her long silence to state, “I think that Sex is one of the cleanest plays on Broadway. There is no nudity, and no obscene language in the whole play.”

(She must have overlooked the fact that in one scene she was stretched across the lap of her leading man in a string skirt which, when the strings were caused to separate, * revealed a skimpy undergarment resembling a G-string.) After much legal maneuvering on both sides, the trial finally got underway on April 2nd, before Justice Donnellan. Miss West, powdered, bejeweled and ravishingly. gowned, listened to the declamatory statements hurled by Wallace who, after a bombastic tirade, almost got into a fist fight with the defense attorney hell-bent on protecting Miss West’s good name. The mobbed courtroom _ waited for one of Miss West’s famous outbursts of temper, but she remained unruffled and little more than silent—as though waiting for an opportune time to begin blasting away at the puritans of the law.

But as the trial came to an end, the leading man, Barry O’Neill, appeared apprehensive. Fear began to pale the rugged countenance of a man who had been a lieutenant on a British minesweeper during World War I.

James A. Timoney, officer of the corporation which owned the play (named the Moral Production Company) pulled a rosary from his pocket and held it as though in reverent prayer. Wallace seemed to literally gyrate as he made a ringing and denunciatory summing up. Miss West remained calm and rather cheerful and tried to bolster up the lagging spirits around her with warm smiles and cute quips.

On April 4th, the verdict came down: “GUILTY!”

The leading man buried his face in his hands and was heard to sob. Other men had tears in their eyes. Timoney fingered his rosary. Miss West, still calm, though somewhat bitter, exclaimed: “Anyone who needs a dirty play ought to call on (Wallace) for suggestions.” She contended that it was not the content of the play—but the manner in which Wallace had presented the case that had brought in the adverse verdict.

A delightful remark made to a Times reporter by a chorus girl, gained a great deal of public attention.

“Why, the chief sources of amusement among us between scenes were discussions on the music of Beethoven and Bach, Shakespeare, and all the world’s most famous philosophers and literati.”

On April 22nd, called “The Day Sex Was Jailed,” Mae West, Timoney, and Morgenstern were fined and given ten days each in the workhouse. Donnellan, in delivering the sentences, said, “. . . the play is clearly obscene, immoral, and indecent . . . We are not a puritanical people, but we are a moral com- munity . . . New York … is the most moral city in the universe.”

Miss West nonchalantly rouged her cheeks, freshened her lipstick and, with great aplomb, undulated across the room, commenting: “. . . that prosecutor Wallace could make The Rosary look like a suggestive play if he talked five minutes on it.”

But while the trial was over—the shenanigans were far from finished. The darling of the headlines turned the simple act of going to jail into a colorful extravaganza. She drove to ” jail in her flashy $20,000 limousine followed by throngs of cheering admirers. Her arm was limp from signing autographs. People pleaded for a strand of her hair, for a button, a scented garter. One passionate devotee begged, “I’d sell my soul to kiss your little finger.” Mae, gracious but still quippy, remarked, “Give a lover like you a finger and you’ll want more than you can hand-le.” Her parting remark was “Give my regards to Broadway.”

While the law found a way to lock up the symbol of sex, the law could not tarnish her brilliance. From the moment she stepped into the Welfare Island workhouse, the drab structure glistened with her personality. The blue cotton uniform which made boards, boxes and bags of the other women, seemed to be transformed into a sheer negligee on Mae. Her bare gray cell took on the aura of a royal boudoir. She asked no favors, no special treatment, and performed the menial tasks without complaint.

She distributed the gifts sent to her among the other less fortunate prisoners. An expert on matters of the heart, she gave advice to the lovelorn and bolstered their sinking spirits with hope. The only rancor she expressed was against Wallace and District Attorney Joab Banton, whom she denounced in strong terms.

“Jail life is not bad after all,” she confided. “It may be the making of me.

“They say I’m a terrible woman, but I’m not really. I never drink or smoke.”

After serving her sentence she presented Warden Harry Schleth with $1,000 to buy books for the jail library. The warden, though obviously appreciative of the gift, commented flatly that he would exercise “liberal” censorship over the choice of books. Miss West’s reply was either unheard, or unprintable . . . though she did admit that her term in prison had provided her with enough material for a dozen plays.

Upon leaving the workshop, she was greeted by a group of New York society women, who as representatives of a charity committee, were eager to hear her views on prison life. Miss West, standing beside a black “pie wagon” in which she had once ridden, delivered a most enlightening lecture on the subject— and other varied topics that wilted the starch in the more prissy ladies. It was noted that two of the women almost fainted. It was not noted whether they almost fainted from thrill or shock.

Mae West, the high priestess of sex, the gaudy-glamour gal who put an extra pulse-beat in the American male’s libido, the fabulous woman who helped chase sex from the shadows and into the light of open-mindedness, went on to more daring and greater accomplishments. She was finally immortalized during World War II when the British Royal Air Force gave the name of Mae Wests to their bulging life jackets. Said Mae proudly, “It makes me feel like I started a second front of my own.”

Going strong today and packing them in wherever she performs, Mae West, past sixty, is still able to make many a younger actress envy her sex appeal. In her night club act, surrounded by half a dozen muscular young men who make Greek statues look like lumps of clay, she comments, “It’s not the men in my life, but the life in my men that counts.”

Mae West is living proof that you can take the woman out of Sex, but you can’t take sex out of the woman!

Navy Flyer Invents Tandem Airplane for Heavy Loads (Dec, 1929)

2012-05-18T21:06:45Z

Harold H. “Kiddy” Karr was a pioneering naval aviator (Enlisted Naval Aviation Pilot Certificate #1). He passed away in 1978.

Navy Flyer Invents Tandem Airplane for Heavy Loads
A TANDEM airplane called the KarrAvan has been invented by Harold H. Karr, a naval aviation pilot at North Island, San Diego, California. The ship which is 130 feet long and has a wing spread of 96 feet is able to lift 85,000 pounds. The unique flying machine will be powered by five 420 h.p. engines and will have a top speed of 135 miles an hour. The ship will carry 80 passengers and their baggage more than 4,000 miles without a halt.

Give Me One Evening And I’ll Give You A Push-Button Memory (Dec, 1961)

2012-05-19T03:06:20Z

His course is still around. His books on magic and memory (first one in 1996 and latest published in 2007) are still in print.

Give Me One Evening And I’ll Give You A Push-Button Memory

Yes! Here at last is your chance to gain the super-powered, file-cabinet memory you’ve always dreamed about…so easily and so quickly that you’ll he astounded …AND ACTUALLY DO IT WITHOUT RISKING A PENNY!

Let me explain! I don’t care how poor you may think, your memory Is now! I believe that you have a memory 10 TO 20 TIMES MORE POWERFUL THAN YOU REALIZE TODAY! I believe that your memory is working at a tiny fraction of its true power today—because you simply don’t know the right way to feed it facts! Because you don’t know the right way to take names and faces and anything else you want to remember —and burn them Into your memory so vividly that you can never forget them!

Yes! Remembering is a trick! Powerful memories can be made to order—you don’t have to be born with them! The secret of a super-powered, hair-trigger memory is as simple as tying your shoelace! I can teach it to you in a single evening! A nd I’m willing to prove it to you without your risking a penny’ Here’s how!

Would You Invest Three Hours of Your Time to Transform Your Memory?

All I ask from you is this. Let me send you—at my risk—one of the most fascinating books you have ever read. When this book arrives, set aside only one evening. Give this book your uninterrupted attention. And then get ready for one of the most thrilling accomplishments of your entire life!

Take this book and turn to page 39. Read eight short pages —no more! And then, put down the book. Review in your own mind the one simple secret I’ve shown you. And then—get ready to test your new, AUTOMATIC memory!

What you are going to do, in that very first evening, is this! without referring to the book, you are going to sit down, and you are going to write—not five, not ten, but TWENTY important facts that you have never been able to memorize before! If you are a business man, they may be customers’ orders that you have received … if you are a salesman, they may be twenty different products in your line … if you are a student, they may be the twenty parts of your homework.

In any case you are simply going to glance over that list again for a few moments. You are going to perform a simple mental trick on each one of these facts—that will burn that fact into your mind, permanently and automatically! And then you are going to put that list away. You’re going to bed without thinking of It again.

And the next morning, you are going to amaze your family and friends! When you go down to business, you’ll attend to every one of those orders—automatically—without referring to your memo pad—without being a slave to reminders, or notes, or other “paper crutches!”

You’ll keep every single appointment on time—because one appointment will automatically flash into your mind after another—at the precise moment you need them—exactly as though you pushed a mental button!

Suddenly, Whole New Worlds of Self-Confidence Open Up for You!

But this is just the beginning of the “miracles” you can perform with your memory! This secret is Just one of the over 50 MEMORY INTENSIFIERS contained in this book! You have seen men and women use these exact same methods on television to astound you! But you never knew how incredibly simple they were—once you learned the inside secret!

For instance—REMEMBERING NAMES AND FACES! How many times have you been embarrassed, because you couldn’t remember the name of the person you were talking to … or introduce him to a friend! In as little as one short week after you receive this book, how would you like to walk into a room full of TWENTY new people.. . meet each one of them only once . . . and then remember the names — automatically —for as long as you live!

Yes! these names and faces are filed in the storehouse of your memory—permanently!

Think of the advantage in business—when you can call every customer by his name. Think of becoming a celebrity at your club—as the member who “knows everyone” . . . who can be depended upon to avoid mistakes, to win new friends for the organization, to get things done!

This book teaches you how to memorize a speech, or a sales presentation—in minutes! It teaches you how to remember every card played when you relax at night! It can improve your gin, or poker, or bridge game by 100% in a single week!

This book shows you how to improve the depth and force and power of your mind! It shows you how to double your vocabulary . . . learn dozens of ways to burn new words into your memory . . . learn their meanings without looking them up . . . repeat entire phrases, sentences, paragraphs from the great writers! You’ll be able to learn a foreign language in Just a few short weeks—at least three to four times as quickly and easily as you could without this system!

You’ll remember dates, addresses, appointments — automatically! You’ll carry dozens of telephone numbers in the file-cabinet of your mind!

MEET HARRY LORAYNE “The human being with the most phenomenal memory in the world!” Hurry Lorayne has lectured in front of thousands of Americans! Rotarians, Elks, Masons. Chamber of Commerce groups have all called on this amazing man to prove the business and social power of a strong reliable memory! Lorayne’s memory is so strong that he can remember the names, faces, addresses and occupations of over 700 different people in a single evening—after meeting each one of them only once I And yet, a few short years ago, this man’s memory was no better than yours I This man trained his own memory—he built the most fabulous memory in the world from scratch! And now he gives you the very same secrets he discovered and perfected himself! Memory Builders that work overnight! Secrets that can change your entire life in a single week—OR EVERY CENT OF YOUR MONEY BACK!

Try It Entirely at My Risk

The name of this book is HOW TO DEVELOP A SUPERPOWER MEMORY!

This book is a word-for-word copy of my regular mail-order course, which I sell for $25. However, the book costs you only $3.98! And I want you to try this book—in your own home—entirely at my risk! Here’s how!

First, try for yourself the experiment I have described in this article! See for yourself the almost-unbelievable results in the very first evening alone! And then, continue to use the book for an additional week! In this very first week alone, i! this amazing book doesn’t do everything I say . if it doesn’t give you a file-cabinet memory—no matter what your age—no matter how poor you may think your memory is today—then simply return the book for every cent of your money back!

You have nothing to Use! Act TODAY!

MAIL NO-RISK COUPON TODAY!

MEMORY RESEARCH BUREAU, Dept. SM-12 386 Fourth Avenue, New York 16, N. Y.

Gentlemen: Yes, I want to try a copy of Harry Lorayne’s amazing new book HOW TO DEVELOP A SUPER-POWER MEMORY—entirely at your risk. I will pay postman only $3.98 plus low C.O.D. charges. I will use this book for a full ten days at your risk. If I am not completely delighted … if this book does not do everything you say, I will simply return it for every cent of my money back.